Intel 510 Install on 2011 15 inch

Well i read pretty much everything i could find and yes some success and some failures on the 13 and 17 but the 15 seems to be less of a issue. Not sure here but I ordered the darn thing to try. I already have a OWC 200gb Extreme Pro sitting in the optical bay running the OS today and the spinning drive as backup in the hard drive space which will be removed for the Intel 510 to try and get Sata 3.

My game plan open the box install the 510 in hard drive connector space. Boot from the current OS I know i will get initialize the drive which I will do as normal but I will zero it out first than create a partition only maybe 5mgs smaller than the total capacity. This seemed to work for someone. Than I will clone over the OS from the OWC than boot with SMC than pick the new drive and see what gives. just in case I do have 2 OS backups and just did a time machine drive for kicks. I don't normally use time machine

Any additional thoughts to those who have had success on the 15 inch. Figured I ask now before I attack tomorrow just in case I am missing some weird little catch to getting this thing to negotiate to sata 3.

It's vey unclear whats going on. At least on person has stated that his 510 works great in bootcamp but fails in OS X. So this is something to consider, as it would effect a new 15 inch as well.

But what we know (or think we know): Some work, some don't. Some work and occasionally beachball, some don't want to work at all (or freeze a lot).

Like you said, i've only seen up until now 13" and 17" inch complaints, but there are also working 13" and 17" machines, so it's possible that this would also be the case with 15": Anand had one that worked, etc.

I don't think you should zero out SSDs. Can anyone confirm or deny this? I've read that this should be avoided.

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Zeroing out the drive is actually a good idea in the beginning to find any potential defects with the drive (ie a defective flash chip) -- the write will fail and you'll know something's up. It will cause you to reduce the lifespan of your entire SSD by 1 write cycle, but that's pretty negligible. And it shouldn't affect performance with any modern controller (and especially if you enable TRIM in the OS); most people report that zeroing a heavily used SSD will restore its performance to like-new levels.

Well the one reason to zero it out at least in my thinking is maybe there is something on the drive from the factory that I may really want to wipe out anyway. It seems now this is a guess those that zeroed are seeing less issues. Well I'll know soon enough just got my overnight tracking. i will get it all going but might wait for Trim until I get back from trip.

Staff Member

Zeroing out the drive is actually a good idea in the beginning to find any potential defects with the drive (ie a defective flash chip) -- the write will fail and you'll know something's up. It will cause you to reduce the lifespan of your entire SSD by 1 write cycle, but that's pretty negligible. And it shouldn't affect performance with any modern controller (and especially if you enable TRIM in the OS); most people report that zeroing a heavily used SSD will restore its performance to like-new levels.

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If you zero out the entire drive without TRIM support, you will significantly decrease write performance on the drive, sometimes as much as 50%. If you DO have TRIM support enabled (see here), a zero will make sure the drive has been TRIM'd and all space is clear to write data. If you have not enabled TRIM support by the hack do not zero the drive.

As another data point, I have a Intel 510 120GB in a 2011 13" MBP and it works perfectly. Others with seemingly the same machine and using the same install method I do have problems. (shrug)

TRIM is done by the OS. With no OS there can be no TRIM. You need to install the OS then enable the TRIM hack.... then zero the drive's free space. This will give you a clean start.

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Sorry if I'm a bit new to this, but how does this work? How do you zero the drive after installing the OS? What is zeroing? Is it just the secure erase (write with zeros 1-pass) option in disc utility?

Staff Member

Sorry if I'm a bit new to this, but how does this work? How do you zero the drive after installing the OS? What is zeroing? Is it just the secure erase (write with zeros 1-pass) option in disc utility?

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Yes exactly. With TRIM enabled using the hack, do a secure erase of free space with Disk Util. That will free up all the open space on the SSD for new writes and theoretically speed things up. In the TRIM hack thread you can see people who have posted test results before and after doing this and it does make a difference.

Just for members here . I loaded the drive in the hard bay slot and than did a immediate SMC before I had the chance to initialize it as soon as I formatted it first I checked the negotiated speed and it was Sata 3 than I made a partition for the drive and left out about 5gb of space so the drive is 245 instead of 250. CCC from the OWC drive ( okay fast as heck ) than went to system preferences and selected the Intel as the boot drive and all seems okay for now.

Doing the X bench test it did score a little better but some numbers are better than others as well and some much lower. It is the way they have this drive setup and actually I lost some time in processing raw files. Now I will do that again, I do believe in a little seasoning on drives. LOL

But works and i am running Sata 3. Now I will recreate the OWC drive in 2 partitions one 80gb space for a backup OS and the rest for storage. Eventually I will have to see what OWC Sata 3 drives will look like and may make the switch but for now this looks good

Oh one thing I did notice when on initial boot of drive the fans kicked in hard and temps went up for a period of time ( after OS install). Might be just working itself in with some processes. I shut down after things settled down than rebooted and all is well. Don't tell anyone but my temp went down at idle 2-4 C also. Must be the spinner not being in the box now

Oh one thing I did notice when on initial boot of drive the fans kicked in hard and temps went up for a period of time ( after OS install). Might be just working itself in with some processes. I shut down after things settled down than rebooted and all is well. Don't tell anyone but my temp went down at idle 2-4 C also. Must be the spinner not being in the box now

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That's initial hard work was most likely the initial Spotlight indexing.

The same thing happens in with the Windows Search in a VMware or Parallels virtual machine.

Yes exactly. With TRIM enabled using the hack, do a secure erase of free space with Disk Util. That will free up all the open space on the SSD for new writes and theoretically speed things up. In the TRIM hack thread you can see people who have posted test results before and after doing this and it does make a difference.

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Pardon my ignorance, but how does this work exactly? For example, do I do the TRIM hack first or zero out the drive first? And what if I partitioned the drive in 2? I do zero out both partitions, or just the OS partition?

How will TRIM ensure sustained speed after use? Do I have to zero out my drive every time I want TRIM to do its thing?

Staff Member

Pardon my ignorance, but how does this work exactly? For example, do I do the TRIM hack first or zero out the drive first? And what if I partitioned the drive in 2? I do zero out both partitions, or just the OS partition?

How will TRIM ensure sustained speed after use? Do I have to zero out my drive every time I want TRIM to do its thing?

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When you buy a new SSD each cell on the drive is marked as unused so data can quickly be written there. When you write data to a cell then delete that data, the cell is marked by the SSD as available for use but the data is not really deleted from the cell until that cell is written to again. So the second time that same cell is written to the old data has to be deleted before the new data can go there... and this slows down the SSD's write speed. This is how things work without TRIM. If you don't write a lot of data, it may take a long time before each cell is written to once and you won't notice write performance drop much. If you write a lot if data, write performance can drop more quickly.

Now add TRIM to the equation. What TRIM does is at the OS Level tell the SSD a file delete has occurred and not only makes a cell available for use but ALSO deletes the data from the cell. In this way all available SSD memory cells are "fresh" like when the drive was new. When data needs to be rewritten to one of these cells there is only a write operation and not the delete first then write operation I described earlier. Much faster.

Okay... so ideally what you want is all available SSD memory cells to have no old data in them so they can be quickly written to, and TRIM does this. But TRIM can only work going forward in time from when it is activated. SSD cells used prior to TRIM activation are not "fresh" and will still require the delete then write steps to use them, and they will be slow.

So what you want to do on a used SSD is partition and format the SSD then install your OS and data and activate TRIM. Then if you run the Disk Util erase free space command it fills every last cell on the SSD with data and then deletes that data making the free space on the drive in a fresh unused state and available for fast write access. You will want to erase free space on any partition on the SSD for the same reason.

There is nothing special about the erase free space Disk Util that causes this. All it is doing is writing a large file to the SSD then erasing it... and this causes the drive to be TRIM'd like you want. You could accomplish the same thing by making a large file and just copy it over and over until the drive is full then delete all the file you made. The objection is to use each SSD cell under TRIM then delete the data under TRIM.

You want to keep TRIM activated long term because without it continued file creation and deletion will set the SSD cells back to "available but used" again and this slows write operations.

There is no need to "zero" the drive again after the first time if you leave TRIM activated as TRIM will keep the SSD cell states as they should be in the future.

When you buy a new SSD each cell on the drive is marked as unused so data can quickly be written there. When you write data to a cell then delete that data, the cell is marked by the SSD as available for use but the data is not really deleted from the cell until that cell is written to again. So the second time that same cell is written to the old data has to be deleted before the new data can go there... and this slows down the SSD's write speed. This is how things work without TRIM. If you don't write a lot of data, it may take a long time before each cell is written to once and you won't notice write performance drop much. If you write a lot if data, write performance can drop more quickly.

Now add TRIM to the equation. What TRIM does is at the OS Level tell the SSD a file delete has occurred and not only makes a cell available for use but ALSO deletes the data from the cell. In this way all available SSD memory cells are "fresh" like when the drive was new. When data needs to be rewritten to one of these cells there is only a write operation and not the delete first then write operation I described earlier. Much faster.

Okay... so ideally what you want is all available SSD memory cells to have no old data in them so they can be quickly written to, and TRIM does this. But TRIM can only work going forward in time from when it is activated. SSD cells used prior to TRIM activation are not "fresh" and will still require the delete then write steps to use them, and they will be slow.

So what you want to do on a used SSD is partition and format the SSD then install your OS and data and activate TRIM. Then if you run the Disk Util erase free space command it fills every last cell on the SSD with data and then deletes that data making the free space on the drive in a fresh unused state and available for fast write access. You will want to erase free space on any partition on the SSD for the same reason.

There is nothing special about the erase free space Disk Util that causes this. All it is doing is writing a large file to the SSD then erasing it... and this causes the drive to be TRIM'd like you want. You could accomplish the same thing by making a large file and just copy it over and over until the drive is full then delete all the file you made. The objection is to use each SSD cell under TRIM then delete the data under TRIM.

You want to keep TRIM activated long term because without it continued file creation and deletion will set the SSD cells back to "available but used" again and this slows write operations.

There is no need to "zero" the drive again after the first time if you leave TRIM activated as TRIM will keep the SSD cell states as they should be in the future.

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Wow! What a detailed and wonderful post. Thanks a lot. This should really be a sticky somewhere.

Staff Member

Wow! What a detailed and wonderful post. Thanks a lot. This should really be a sticky somewhere.

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Glad it was helpful.

I should add many SSD's are touted as having firmware that endeavors to do what TRIM does without an OS that uses TRIM. I think the jury is still out on weather these SSD firmware solutions work as well as TRIM.

Thanks for pointing this thread out to me mate. I'll be using your little trick when I get the drive. But I may wait until Lion anyway, if it's released this year that is??? But I'm looking forward to have a decent fast Intel SSD that I can keep for a 2011 MB Pro

It seems like a nice drive , maybe not the fastest one coming out with Sata 3 but I think a safe bet considering some of the others. If anything when OWC comes out with there Sata 3 i will look at it but this one is very capable of great speed.

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